Dr. Bill Gray Interviewed by Alan V. Schmukler

Dr. Bill Gray, MD has been in private classical homeopathic practice for 45 years.. After graduating from Stanford Medical School, he studied with George Vithoulkas for three years, and subsequently studied the methods of Lou Klein, Rajan Sankaran, and Massimo Mangialavori. Dr. Gray has lectured on Classical Homeopathy throughout the U.S. and Europe, co-developing homeopathic schools. His book “Homeopathy: Science or Myth?” was published in 1999. He received the first Henry Williams Award for service to the homeopathic profession in 1999.

Dr. Gray is currently Founder and Chairman of Coherence Apps LLC. The program repertorizes a case and then plays the remedy frequency via cell phone.

AS: You received your M.D. from Stanford Medical School in 1970 and a year later took the National Center for Homeopathy course for doctors. Over the years, you’ve studied with many homeopathy teachers. Who were those teachers and how did they influence your approach?

BG: Yes, indeed, I have been privileged to be witness to a huge evolution in homeopathic thinking! We have progressed from a data-point, keynote and rubric worldview to profound insights into human dynamics and connections with nature. For me, the experience has gone from a kind of laborious mathematical calculation to an enlivening expansion of understanding people and nature.

After the NCH basic course, which really opened my Stanford-trained allopathic eyes, I did a brief apprenticeship with Maesimund Panos. Through her I met George Vithoulkas and began going to Athens for a month at a time to tag along with his clinic rounds. Soon I realized that homeopathy requires much more commitment, so I moved to Athens for almost three years to study with him in depth. His “Essence” concept, Definition of Health, and interpretation of Laws of Cure showed me the vast potential of homeopathy for all medicine of the future. His teachings are still foundational in my practice today.

From there I took Lou Klein’s Master course, which was (and still is) mind-boggling in its breadth. His teachings showed me that polychrests are limiting — that truly ALL remedies in nature are profoundly applicable in any case, even those not yet made into homeopathic remedies. Even today, Lou’s teachings are a beacon of aspiration. Following Lou’s influence, Google Search became a major source alongside Allen, Clarke, Phatak, Kent, and Vithoulkas for me.

In the 1990s, I studied in depth with Rajan Sankaran and watched his astounding evolution as a teacher to culmination in his current Synergy — a foundational book for anyone learning homeopathic thinking, in my view. His remedy descriptions for me are profound and reliable. With most of my cases, I refer to one of his books to confirm my thinking of a remedy possibility. His innovations in Sensation-method case-taking also help me in certain cases that are amenable to that method.

From around 2002 to the present, I have been an avid student of Massimo Mangialavori. He shares a profound grasp of human psychodynamics in relation to the Corpus — combined with the way human remedy types are animated by how substances actually live in nature. These perspectives have become an endless meditation in my practice, with immense value in actual results. His careful attention to true empiricism reflects Hahnemann’s own but with a vastly expanded range of connection to nature. Massimo’s Praxis for me is the modern Organon underlying the science of homeopathy. I recommend reading those volumes carefully and meditatively for all students as foundational learning. Massimo continues to this day to be my primary focus for expanding my knowledge.

If there is a lesson in my 45 years of practice, it is that learning is endless. Somehow cases seem to get more and more challenging with time. For me, my sense of mastery covers maybe one-sixth of what is there to be known, even of only those substances made into remedies so far!

AS: Your education covered the whole range of perspectives on homeopathy. Are today’s homeopathy schools approaching anything like that? If you started a school today, what would you offer?

BG: I am not really expert on all the schools. However, from what I do know, Rajan’s The Other Song is the largest and best-thought-out on the planet. Students start from a young age and are exposed to clinical experience from the very start. Of course, material is presented in terms of deep materia medica and Families in modern terms.

Education is the most important topic of all. From the US vantage point, and also in Europe, the profession focused primarily on “empty-nesters”. This brings maturity, but not the kind of dedication young people bring to years of systematic study toward an identity as a full professional.

From my perspective, the ideal school would have a full-time curriculum aimed at young people. Clinical experience from the beginning would keep the focus on human issues rather than theoretical ones. I would definitely include anatomy, physiology, pathology, and all kinds of allopathic diagnostic tests, but everything would be couched in homeopathic orientation. I would emphasize homeopathic theory as the basis for case-taking and all stages of followup.

My own personal heretical views would be less emphasis on Organon memorization and much less emphasis on repertorization than is extant these days. Repertorization is an abstraction of an abstraction away from patient experience; rubrics are way too artificial. Personally, I use Reference Works exclusively, and particularly Rajan’s way of searching anchor symptoms in all books at once.

AS: Clinical experience is also valuable in understanding the remedies. I’ve seen some very intuitive homeopaths grasp a case in a moment, that a more left brained practitioner would struggle with. How important is that intuitive aspect?

BG: Absolutely, intuition is vital. It’s not magic, though. It comes from constant study of cases and remedies, always reaching for deepest dynamics. As Lou Klein says, everyone has the sensitivity needed for homeopathy. We sense someone’s mood the minute we enter the room. How do we do that? Not by collecting keynotes and rubrics and then analyzing! We all have intuition, then homeopathic intuition itself is honed by constant meditation and study of video cases, paper cases, and materia medica — not just to remember whether a particular remedy is warm blooded or chilly or craves bananas, but to reach for the inner life experience of the person needing that remedy.

AS:Over a decade ago when I read the research in your book Homeopathy: Science or Myth?, I thought, “This will help put an end to the placebo myth and silence the critics.” Alas. What went wrong?

BG: Frankly, I don’t think people really are persuaded by science or evidence. They talk like it, and critics stuck in chemical-level thinking espouse it, but very few people are really persuaded. Science, after all, is more of a religion than an open-minded inquiry. Mostly people believe in their own experience, or what friends or family say, or what is considered politically credible. I remember the big debate in British Parliament. Someone gave my book to all the members of parliament to counter drug company critics. Nothing came of it.

We need to get back to basics. Homeopathy spread like wildfire in its first several decades because it was so effective and inexpensive in treating acute diseases, even though word spread slowly by word of mouth, boat, and newspapers. Nowadays we have instant connection worldwide via internet and social media. We should be more organized around putting out the word using modern communications.

Also, we should lead with claims about acutes. Relief is very rapid with acute disorders, so the question of placebo is usually moot. Curing chronic disease is slower and more challenging, and more amenable to placebo fantasies.

AS: You developed MDinyourHand with algorithms for treating acutes using eRemedies. That’s a fascinating technological advance. Could you tell our readers what it is, discuss the technology and share its posibilities?

BG:MDinyourHand.com is a website delivering algorithmically-chosen eRemedies DIRECTLY via cellphone or computer. As I mentioned, homeopathy sells immediately by quick relief of serious acutes. Internet and cellphone ubiquity throughout the world can make this truth available to every household and every village on the planet!

The algorithms are straightforward homeopathic expert systems, not unlike others on the web. This innovation is eRemedy delivery. Many of us know well that homeopathic remedies are made beyond Avogadro’s Number. Therefore they are energies. In the 1990’s Jacques Benveniste demonstrated in the laboratory not only that remedies are energies but also that they can be made into MP3 files deliverable by email. Recently a similar process was demonstrated by Nobelist Luc Montaignier. So, I worked with an Agilent consultant engineer to make a device that would create and store .wav and MP3 eRemedies.

Thus far I have made 23 modules and 250 eRemedies (mostly 30 potencies, a few 200). The aim is to solve common problems such as fever, cough, diarrhea, influenza, bladder infections, injuries, sprains, head injury, anxiety disorders, grief, back pain, pet cystitis, pet abscesses, pet panic, colic, and teething — useful globally but aimed largely at the developed world with widespread web connections. Moreover, there are malaria, typhoid, and cholera modules for use in poverty regions — where cellphones are rapidly becoming commonplace. As a matter of fact, a nonprofit clinic based on MDinyourHand use is developing in Sierra Leone already.

For me, the ultimate vision, aside from bringing relief to acutes, is to spread homeopathy worldwide in mimicry with how it spread initially in Hahnemann’s day — though now at lightning internet speed! As demand develops, my vision is that more and more young people will see homeopathy as a potential career.

Another vision I have is aimed directly at homeopaths already in practice. Personally I find eRemedy choices made by algorithms to be even more effective than what I can do live. This is because so much prior thought has been put into the question sets and eRemedy grades. Now, when I get an acute call on a weekend or when I am busy with patients, I can refer the patient first to MDinyourHand.com for quick relief!

Finally, MDinyourHand ultimately will be a platform for homeopaths to create their own modules for local epidemics or veterinary acutes. My vision is that we can create a participatory community that will share benefits for all of us and with the world at large.

AS: So the remedies are delivered as sound frequencies that one listens to. Does the quality of the e- remedy depend on the sound reproduction quality of the cell phone or other audio device on the receiving end? Do you want to share something about the way remedy frequencies are determined?

BG: Good question. I don’t know yet. We will find out from data in the “wild,” so to speak. So far the response rate is about 90-95% from devices all over the world, so I am hopeful. I do not analyze and then choose frequencies a priori. Instead, a remedy is placed directly into the equipment, which is a simple coil and amplifier and converter. Initially I worried whether the voice frequency range of cellphones would be adequate. Suppose real healing occurs at higher or lower frequencies? I surmised that because we evolve using hearing and sight primarily, the voice range might be adequate. So I invested time and money into this and followed up by testing in a veterinary practice at first. Sure enough, results were good. I still wonder if light frequencies might need to be used as well, but I haven’t seen a need to cross that bridge yet. This whole technology — in humans (and animals), not laboratory settings — is totally new. There is a lot more to be discovered.

AS: Could you tell us about the first homeopathic clinic in West Africa that arose out of using eRemedies to treat Ebola? Is the technology also used in urgent-care situations?

BG: The clinic in West Africa developed during the Ebola epidemic. When Ebola hit, I was developing MDinyourHand in its early stages. I realized the opportunity for homeopathy and eRemedies, so I launched a Facebook campaign for West Africa. A Facebook friend, supplied with bio-hazard equipment raised by my nonprofit, Emergency Dr.org, fought with the authorities to get an opportunity to treat Ebola using his cellphone. In complicated and heroic circumstances, he gained access to three cases. Two were 16 days critically ill and already had death certificates written up. One was a new case of a health worker who made a gloving mistake. All three were symptom-free within 8 hrs, two within 4 hrs. All were discharged completely well.

Because of the political situation, we decided to build our own quarantine unit. By the time this got off the ground, Ebola had ended, so we converted it to an urgent care clinic. Construction is almost complete. We need $7,000 more to finish tiling and electrical. The local villagers and their elders are very excited and have donated all the labor. The medical and dental boards are approving the use of MDinyourHand for treating acutes in this facility.

Our current plan is to finish the building assuming we get enough tax-exempt donations. The rainy season will then ensue, which makes roads impassable to this facility in Kossoh Town, outside of Freetown. The next step will be to bring teams of homeopathic trainers there early in 2017 to instruct nurse volunteers to do triage and use homeopathy acutely.

As for using MDinyourHand in emergency rooms in the US, that is a political challenge, as you might imagine. I will be meeting this Sunday with a Certified Emergency Room specialist to discuss this; she already knows it could be useful but sees no possibility of convincing institutions to adopt it in the present climate. Perhaps as testimonials come from all over the world? We’ll see … Here is a picture of the clinic construction at its peak:

AS: Those Ebola cases were a powerful example of the success of the method. You’re not likely to hear cries of “placebo.” The possibilities seem endless. On the diagnostic end, determining a person’s frequency by inferring it from a patient’s symptoms, or from kingdoms, periodic table or core sensations, is at best very indirect. Will we ever have direct digital diagnosis, such as Dr. McCoy used on Start Trek?

BG: Who knows? I think that should be possible in the future. Already we have Voll machines, radionics, and radiesthesia, and similar modalities. One major thing to remember is that there is a difference between cure and suppression. Most results of these modalities just measure symptom relief. In early days, I played with these quite a bit, but it was clear that suppression was the norm. As we get closer to identifying frequency patterns, I think we might be able to meet your dream as long as we keep Laws of Cure in mind

AS: In homeopathy, we know that a person can resonate to the frequency of a snake, a horse, a flower, etc. That fact is certainly a key to some mysteries of the universe. Would you like to speculate on that?

BG: This is one of the reasons I love homeopathy. It speaks directly to the Oneness of the Universe. It is a healing science derived directly out of this spiritual principle! As homeopaths, we are connected to people and nature at the same time. An endless expansive process of inquiry. What is there better to do?!

AS: Thank you for sharing with us today. You’ve provided a lot of food for thought!

About the author

Alan V. Schmukler

Alan V. Schmukler is a homeopath, Chief Editor of Homeopathy4Everyone and author of ”Homeopathy An A to Z Home Handbook”, (also available in French, German, Greek, Polish and Portuguese). He is Hpathy’s resident cartoonist and also produces Hpathy’s Tips & Secrets column and homeopathy Crossword puzzles each month. You can visit Alan at his website: www.healgently.com

1 Comment

Excellent interview covering all aspects about Dr Bill Gray. it left me just curious what if he could have attended any seminars of Dr Prafull Vijayakar of Predictive Homeopathy. Years ago when I met Dr Whitmont, and asked him, he demoed how he uses a electrical circuit in a small wooden box to devise the similimum of patients whom he never met and lived in far off places. He ended up saying that however sophisticated may be the device you use, ultimately it is just a crux to help your intuition and the device itself contributes nothing in the process.